This article is from the Winter 1998 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Nichole Royer

Q I have a Tailless rat and would like to make Tailless in other colors, how do I do it?

A It is a fairly simple process to create Tailless in a variety of colors. Simply use one of these formulas:

Formula #1—Creating Agouti: Breed your Tailless male to an Agouti female with a normal tail. This will produce a litter in which some (or all) of the babies will be Agouti. Keep an Agouti female from this litter and breed her back to her father. If there are no Agouti Tailless babies in the first litter, repeat the breeding.

Once you have Agouti, you can add in the appropriate recessive gene to create other varieties of Agouti—Blue for Blue Agouti, Beige for Fawn, Champagne for Silver Fawn. To do this use formula #2.

Formula #2—Creating a recessive color: Breed your Tailless male to a female of the color you want with a normal tail. From the resulting litter, keep a male and a female. Breed them together and about one-quarter of the litter should be the color you want. Some of the babies in this litter should be Tailless. If you do not get Tailless in the desired color, repeat the breeding. This may take several attempts.

Q Is it possible to create a Dumbo Rex Tailless Siamese? If so, what would be the quickest and simplest way? I already have a female Siamese Rex, a Tailless male with Siamese in his background, and a female Platinum self Dumbo.

A Wow, what a project! Yes, it is possible to create a rat that has all of these characteristics. It will take several breedings, time, and a lot of patience.

Ideally you would want to start with rats who already have a number of the characteristics you’re interested in—i.e. Tailless, Rex, Siamese, and Dumbo. You are lucky that you have already found these.

You should breed the Siamese Rex to your Tailless male. The resulting litter should consist of at least a few Siamese babies, some with Rex and some with Standard coats. You will want to keep a female Siamese Rex. If there are no Siamese Rex females, keep the best female Rex of any other color and breed her back to her father. What you are aiming for is producing a Siamese Rex Tailless male. This may require breeding several litters.

Once you have produced a Siamese Rex Tailless male, breed him to your Dumbo. The resulting litter will probably consist of black non-Dumbo babies with Rex and standard coats and normal tails. Keep a Rex and a Standard from this litter and breed them together. You will get a mix of all the characteristics you’re looking for in the resulting litter. You may have to repeat this breeding several times before producing a Siamese Rex Tailless Dumbo.